SK Group: Tech titan Chey Tae-won ordered to pay ex-wife $644m in divorce settlement
The chairman of corporate giant SK Group was sentenced by a South Korean court to the local media ” “divorce of the century“.
The reward, which has yet to be finalized, is below the initial 1.38 trillion won that president Chey Tae-won was told to pay Roh Soh-yeong in 2024.
His marriage to Roh, the former president’s daughter, came more than a decade after it was revealed that he had fathered a child with another woman.
SK Group runs semiconductor giant SK Hynix, which supplies chips to Nvidia and recently broke records on the US stock market.
Chey’s lawyers said, “President Chey Tae-won is very sorry about this matter. [the divorce] What has happened so far has worried many people. “We will share the specific reaction to the decision after reviewing it closely.”
SK Group is one of South Korea’s chaebols (family conglomerates that dominate the country’s economy).
The decision came after negotiations regarding property division between Roh and Chey, who have been married for 35 years.
At the first trial in 2024, Roh’s legal team had successfully argued that Chey received significant assistance from his ex-wife’s father, Roh Tae-woo, who served as the country’s president between 1988 and 1993.
The court found that the dictator gave Chey 30 billion Korean won from his slush fund in 1991 and told Chey to pay 1.38 trillion to his ex-wife.
But the Supreme Court overturned the decision last year, ruling that the slush funds were obtained illegally and could not be considered part of the couple’s assets.
The case shook South Korea.
SK Group started as a textile company in 1953 but has grown rapidly across a wide range of industries to become one of South Korea’s largest conglomerates.
Today it is the second largest chaebol after the Samsung group. South Koreans buy phone plans from SK Telecom and fill up their vehicles at SK gas stations.
The group rose to global prominence after its subsidiary SK Hynix found itself at the center of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. In May, the chipmaker traded over $1 trillion (£750bn) on the South Korean stock market.
As the value of SK Hynix rose, so did the status of SK Group and its chairman, Chey.
Last month, President Lee Jae Myung praised Chey during the unveiling of his landmark AI investment plan, calling him and Samsung chairman JY Lee “Heroes of the Korean People.”
The company also raised $26.5 billion in its New York stock offering, making it the largest-ever IPO by a foreign firm in the United States.
The BBC has contacted SK Group for comment.
